Colonel Tsuji of Malaya (part 1)

[Colonel Tsuji Masanobu (I put his family name first, in the Asian
convention) was a tactical genius, a master of improvisation, and
one of the criminals to wear uniform in the period 1932-1945.
These are notes I put together in 1994 from various sources.
They're presented in chronological order, divided into rough "chapters."
I have omitted source references, to make the text easier to read,
but it's followed by a bibliography, then with comments from
readers of this page. - Dan Ford]

Education of a soldier

Tsuji was born in Ishikawa Prefecture on October 11, 1900,
according to his own account, though others have placed his
birthdate in 1903. At 16 entered the Nagyoa Yonen Gekko
(Preparatory Military School) along with one Iwakuni whom he
would know throughout his army career to its inglorious end in
Hanoi in 1945. "There in Nagoya, under the shade of the camphor
tree . . . we had studied together, gazing often at the golden
dolphins atop the Nagoya Castle." Then the Military Academy in the
Ichigaya section of Tokyo. It was free, evidently, and his
classmates there and in pre school would become a band of helpers
and followers over the next 30 years.
Attached to Army General Staff May 1921.
Graduated War College (more
advanced level evidently than Military Academy) November 1924.

About this time he posed for a photograph, carrying a samurai
sword but dressed in a field uniform. The cloth forage cap bears
one star over the bill. From what can be seen of it under the
cap, Tsuji's head appears to have been shaved clean, and his
wears the round-lensed Oriental spectacles that were so savagely
caricatured in American propaganda cartoons during the Pacific
War. He is wide of jaw but narrow of shoulder.

About 1930 he attended the War University as a lieutenant,
where he quarreled, he said, with his instructors on matters of
military tactics. Studied Chinese, though indifferently, and at
some time studied Russian to about the same degree of enthusiasm.
Perhaps it was here that he was, as he later claimed, a classmate
of Prince Chichibu, the Emperor's younger brother.

To war in China

In Feb 1932 he landed in China during the first Shanghai
Incident as a company commander, a skirmish which he lost 16 men
and from which he emerged "gripping my sword with soaring
spirits." Also in 1932 he went on a trip though Sinkiang province
with an interpreter named Wang Chan-chun. In Lanchow, both were
thrown in jail.

It was a time of conspiracies. In the army, the two major
groups were the Tosei (Control) faction, of which Majo Gen
Hideko Tojo was a prominent member, and which favored a strong
army that did not mix into politics. The more radical Kodo
(Imperial Way) group wanted a "restoration" with the Emperor
acting as a god, free of political advisers, bureaucrats, and
business interests, with the army as his main support. The Kodo
faction was condemned not only by army headquarters but by the
Emperor himself. The officers who held to this view were ready to
mount a coup in November 1934, when Capt Tsuji was a company
commander at the Military Academy. (Among his students was a
young Thai whom he would meet again in Bangkok in 1945.) Learning
that five cadets were involved in the coup, he infiltrated a
trusted cadet into the conspiracy and got a list of names which
he sent to Major Katakura at Imperial Headquarters. The cadets
were arrested on Nov 2; though not convicted, they were expelled
from the academy, and the two officers who had recruited them
were dismissed from the army. The Kodo group believed that the
entire affair had been devised as a trap by Tsuji. In any event,
he stored up influence where it mattered: with such future
commanders as Tojo, Renya Mutaguchi, and Tomioka Yamashita.

"Tsuji was one of the most extraordinary men in the entire
Japanese army. . . . Tsuji was a man of extraordinary ingenuity
and courage; he declared himself immune to death by enemy action,
he was cruel and barbarous; he had mysterious sources of power
and probably direct access to Tojo; he carried out the functions
of a government spy. No respecter of persons he would advise his
superiors without hesitation; often he would give orders in their
name without the slightest authority. Not unexpectedly he was
detested throughout the entire Japanese Army; but where the
business of fighting was concerned, he was invariably right."

"With his roundish face, bald head and small, blinking eyes,
he looked like the typical staff officer." But was he bald or
merely shaven? He was a protege of Col Takeo Ishihira, who was
"determined to make Manchuria into a Buddhist paradise of five
nationalities living in harmony." Tsuji would have gone further,
"making Asia one great brotherhood, an Asia for the Asians." By
his own account, when in his thirties "I . . . divorced my wife
and left my (two) children to participate in the movement for
national reformation," and it may be this period he had in mind.

By 1935, in what appears to be a passport photo, he has grown
a small mustache; his spectacles reflect the light and magnify
his Oriental eyefolds, giving him a cruel aspect that would have
satisfied Americans devotees of "Yellow Peril" books, movies, and
comics. Two years later, by which time the Japanese army and navy
had launched a two-pronged attack on China proper, a photograph
shows him wearing wore the mushroom-cap steel helmet and an
officer's high-necked tunic, crossed by a belt of the sort
standard in the British army of the time, which further
emphasizes his narrow shoulders. A photograph taken later, though
still apparently in China (perhaps Manchuria?), shows him as a
grubby field soldier, his mustache now seems to have flowered
into what, for a Japanese, would be a full beard. He is seated on
the ground with his lower legs crossed, almost in a lotus
position, a rifle across his thigh, a tin cup in his right hand,
a canteen or hongo mess-kit in his lap, much braid on his right
shoulder, and an indubitably sour look on his face. Behind him is
a horse from which he may have just dismounted, a bedroll tied
behind the saddle. Again, the single star on the front of his
forage cap.

Spring 1938 the Emperor's younger brother Prince Chichibu
inspected Manchuria, at which time Tsuji and other members of his
graduating class at Army University attended a banquet in his
honor.

Identified as one of the "officers responsible for
provoking the disastrous Nomonhan incident
in 1939. With the rank of major, Tsuji was one of the senior staff
officers for General Ueda Kenkichi, commander of the Kwantung
Army. Immediately thereafter (Sept 1939) posted to 11th Army Headquarters in
Hankou.

He recruited friends and acolytes in China. One was a young
officer named Shigeharu Asaeda, "an agile, muscular six-footer."
From a poor family, Asaeda applied to the Military Academy
because it was free. "In China he fought so recklessly that Tsuji
sought him out."

Another devotee was Yoshio Kodama, commended to Tsuji by
Ishihara. Looked for him at Nanjing Army Headquarters. "Oh, that
crazy man lives in a filthy little room behind the stable,"
Colonel Imai told him. Asking Tsuji about his quarters, Kodama
was lectured: "These headquarters officers are all rotten. They
are only working for their medals. Every night they go to parties
and play with geishas. Since the China Incident, all the military
have gone bad. They hate me because I know all this and speak
out." He had also turned one staff officer over to the kempeitai
for "corruption," as a result of which the officer committed
suicide. As the story was told, he had once burned down a geisha
house with his fellow officers inside. Either through loyalty to
his wife and children, or out of a more generalized misogyny or
perhaps homosexuality, had nothing to do with women when he was
campaigning.

Getting ready for a larger war

In 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany, Imperial Army
General Staff sent an officer to scout Hong Kong, French
Indochina, and Singapore. He drafted a preliminary invasion plan
for Hong Kong and Singapore. In 1940 other officers made a
similar reconnaissance of the Dutch Indies and the Philippines.
They concluded that many Filipinos and most Malaysians and
Indonesians would applaud the overthrow of colonial governments.
However, the plans drawn up were sketchy, and no spy networks
were put in place.

In Dec 1940, however, three divisions in China were ordered to
train for tropical duty. Col Yoshihide Hayashi put in charge of
the Taiwan Army Research Section with the task of collecting data
on tropical warfare. On 1 Jan 1941 Tsuji arrived to join the
unit--exiled to Taiwan, it was said, by Ishihara's nemesis Hideki
Tojo. On the other hand, a British historian regarded Tsuji as
Tojo's man, and his assignment an effort by Tojo to get the best
possible planning into the invasion of Malay, which produced 38
percent of the world's rubber and 58 percent of its tin, and
which was also the gateway to Britain's major naval base on the
island of Singapore. In any event, he soon became "the driving
force" of the department: "his brilliant maverick spirit inspired
fantastic devotion in the younger staff officers," who soon dubbed
him the "God of Operations."

Among them was the sturdy Capt Asaeda, now 29. Transferred to
a desk job at the War Ministry, he had abandoned his post and his
family, taken a new name, and headed south with the intention of
fighting Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. He made the mistake of
visiting Tsuji, who sent him under guard to Japan, where he was
allowed to retire from the army to avoid scandal. He returned to
Formosa to confront his betrayer but again became a convert,
volunteering to serve as a secret agent. He was assigned to
Burma, Malaya, and Thailand, and began to study the language and
geography of all three.

In March or April, Asaeda went to Thailand as an agricultural
engineer. He photographed key areas, chatted with Thais of low
and high rank, and decided that the country could be taken over a
fight. He then went to Burma, apparently by crossing the border,
and "discovered terrain and climate peculiarities that changed
the accepted theories of tropical warfare." Tsuji next sent
Asaeda to Malaya to gather information on beaches and tides.

In June, secret maneuvers on Japanese-controlled Hainan Island
in the Gulf of Tonkin under supervision of Hayashi and Tsuji.
Like a good samurai, Tsuji was convinced that training and
attitude would overcome physical obstacles: against doctrine, "he
packed thousands of full equipped soldiers into the sweltering
holds of ships, three to a tatami (a mat about six by three
feet), and kept them there for a week in temperatures up to 120
degrees with little water." The same with horses. They were then
landed on open beaches under simulated combat
conditions--infantry, artillery, and engineers.

Gen Yamashita and his 25th Army were assigned to the Malaya
invasion. He welcomed Tsuji's information but took the precaution
of supplementing it with his own, sending Major Teruno Kunitake
on a clandestine survey of the Malay peninsula. Traveling the
length of the colony, he reported that it had far more bridges
than Tsuji had estimated, prompting Yamashita to attach an
engineer regiment to each division, with quantities of bridging
material, and that the engineers be given additional and
strenuous practice in river crossing.

Tsuji meanwhile must have returned to Tokyo, for we see him in
action against Prime Minister Konoye. Decision to war: he wore a
pistol (see?). "two secret organizations, which had learned of
the proposed Konoye-Roosevelt meetings, were plotting to murder
the Prime Minister." One a "gangland-style assault in Tokyo," the
other a railroad bombing as with Marshal Chang. "The latter plan
was devised by a lieutenant colonel named Masanobu Tsuji, already
an idol of the most radical young officers. A chauvinist of the
first water, he was determined to thwart a summit meeting that
was destined to end in a disgraceful peace."

Tsuji picked his acquaintance from China: Yoshio Kodama, now
leader of the most active nationalist party, who had been jailed
for handing the Emperor a rightist petition demanding relief for
the unemployed, and again (wrongly, says Toland) for dynamiting
the Finance Minister's home. Konoye would travel by train from
Tokyo to Yokosuka, and would blow it up at the Rokugo Bridge
outside Tokyo. An unsuccessful attempt on Koyone's life was made
by four men armed with daggers and presumably unallied with
Tsuji, Sep 18 as the PM was leaving his rural home in Ogikubo, 45
min from Tokyo. In the event, the trip was never made, and on Sep
17 Konoye left the capital to rusticate in the seaside resort of
Kamakura. On Oct 17 the Emperor ordered Tojo to form a new
cabinet; the war party was in the saddle.

On 22 Oct Tsuji decided to make his own reconnaissance of
Malaya. Persuaded Captain Ikeda, commander of a reconnaissance
squadron (probably the 18th Independent Chutai: Francillon
roster), to fly him over the British colony. They took off from
Saigon at dawn in a twin-engined Mitsubishi Ki-46 "commandant
reconnaissance" plane, called Type 100 by the JAAF and later
dubbed "Dinah" by Allied pilots. Could fly high and fast and far.
Tsuji in air force uniform in case they were forced down, but the
plane was unmarked. Overflew northern Malaya and scouted its
airfields, with rain clouds forcing them as low as 6,500 ft.
Still in air force uniform, Tsuji reported findings to General
Hisaichi Terauchi, Southern Army commander, and new plans were
drawn up. He flew to Tokyo to present it to Army General Staff in
person with the help of another old friend, Col Takushiro
Hattori, two years older than Tsuji, and now chief of Operations
Section of General Staff.

On to Singapore

The convoys sailed on 4 Dec, each man religiously studying the
pamphlet Tsuji had written, and reached the coast of Malaya at
midnight on December 7/8. (Because of the time zones involved,
this was actually before the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.) The
main landing went brilliantly, but Tsuji's probes into Thailand
were the stuff of which comic operas are made. Major Asaeda found
himself landing on mudflat instead of the white-sand beach he had
reconnoitered; some men drowned and others were killed by Thai
fire. Tsuji had a better landing but his local contact was fast
asleep; he had to go to the Japanese consulate and awaken him.
When they tried to enlist the Thai police to assist them in
crossing the Malay border, their answer was a volley of shots.

Though outnumbered two-to-one, the Japanese never stopped to
consolidate their gains, to rest or regroup or resupply; they
came down the main roads on bicycles, impressing native
conscripts to carry and care for the bicycles during firefights;
they crossed rivers on plank bridges resting on the shoulders of
the engineer troops; when the bicycle tires burst from the heat,
they rode on the rims, raising such a din that terrified Indian
troops broke and ran in the belief that tanks were approaching;
when the bikes broke down, they were repaired with parts from
local machines--cheap, Japanese-built bicycles that the Malays
had imported in preference to more expensive British models.

The Japanese advanced so quickly in Malaya that even they were
often unprepared to follow up their successes. Only Tsuji seemed
to take it in stride. He was often at the front giving advice and
devising fresh plans. At a roadblock halfway down the peninsula
he decided that a frontal attack was called for, but army hq
insisted on a flank attack, which was successful. Nevertheless,
Tsuji stormed in headquarters at midnight, shouting: "What are
you doing sleeping while a battle is going on?" He went into the
bedroom of Lt General Sosaku Suzuki, Yamashita's chief of staff,
who greeted him politely. "What do you mean wearing nightwear
when I'm reporting from the front line?" Tsuji yelled. Suzuki
dutifully changed into his dress uniform and buckled on his
sword. "I am the chief operational staff officer responsible for
the operations of the entire [25th] army. I submitted my idea
based on actual front-line conditions and your rejection of my
request means you no longer have confidence in me." He raved
until dawn, when he wrote out his resignation and retired to his
quarters, emerging a week later to resume his duties. He, Suzuki,
and Yamashita all acted as if nothing had happened.

In Singapore, "five thousand Chinese had been murdered largely
at his instigation for 'supporting' British colonialism."
According to Lt General Sosaku Suzuki, quoted by a fellow officer
later in the war: "It was the Ishihara-Tsuji clique--the
personification of gekokujo--that brought the Japanese Army to
this deplorable situation. In Malaya, Tsuji's speech and conduct
were often insolent; and there was this problem of inhumane
treatment of Chinese merchants, so I advised General Yamashita to
punish Tsuji severely and then dismiss him. But he feigned
ignorance. I tell you, so long as they [such men] exert influence
on the Army, it can only lead to ruin. Extermination of these
poisonous insects should take precedence over all other
problems."